Mysteries Set in Ontario

Detective Toby Mystery

First book: Are You Listening to Me?

by Mary M. Cushnie-Mansour

Camden Gale and his sister, Emma, have had a tough life. Camden has become paranoid/delusional about everything and everyone around him, and he and...

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Highclere Inn & Carriage House Mystery

First book: A Box of Frogs

by Josh Hellyer

When centenarian Senator Miles “The Tank” Valentine meets an electrifying end at his own resort, Highclere Inn & Carriage House, the shocks are...

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Quill & Packet Mystery

First book: Bury the Lead

by Elizabeth Renzetti, Kate Hilton

A big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets … and murder. Cat Conway ...

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Hazel Micallef

First book: The calling

by Inger Ash Wolfe

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas and is now making her way toward retirement with somethi...

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Steve Nastos Mystery

First book: Cherry Beach Express

by R. D. Cain

Until recently, Steve Nastos was a respected Toronto detective and a member of the sexual assault unit. Now he’s in custody, accused of killing h...

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Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery

First book: Cold Mourning

by Brenda Chapman

Officer Kala Stonechild, who has left her Northern Ontario detachment to join a specialized Ottawa crime unit, is tasked with returning Underwood h...

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Charley Scott Mystery

First book: Cover Art

by Vanessa Westermann

Charley Scott is thrilled to be running a summer pop-up gallery in cottage country. Returning to the lakeside village, not on vacation but as an ar...

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Reid Bennett Mystery

First book: Dead in the Water

by Ted Wood

After his life was destroyed because of his efforts to prevent a rape, Reid Bennett relocated to Murphy's Harbor, a quaint little town in Canada. B...

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Kate Henry Mystery

First book: The dead pull hitter

by Alison Gordon

For the first time in their history, the Toronto Titans are on a winning streak and headed for the World Series—a dream come true for sports repo...

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Detective Aunty Investigates

First book: Detective Aunty

by Uzma Jalaluddin

After her husband’s unexpected death twelve months earlier, Kausar Khan never thought she’d receive another phone call as heartbreaking—until...

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Inspector Green Mystery

First book: Do or die

by Barbara Fradkin

Ottawa homicide inspector Michael Green is absolutely obsessed with his job, a condition which has almost ruined his marriage several times. When t...

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Cherry Mills Mystery

First book: Every Move They Make

by Lee Gabel

Raising teenagers is hard: a constant tug-of-war between respecting boundaries and encouraging independence. But what happens when your teenager do...

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Murdoch Mysteries

First book: Except the Dying

by Maureen Jennings

In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the unclad body of a young woman is found naked and frozen in a quiet laneway. Acting Detective William Murdoch...

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John Cardinal and Lise Delorme

First book: Forty Words for Sorrow

by Giles Blunt

In the quiet Canadian town of Algonquin Bay, a frozen body has been found in an abandoned mine shaft. She is soon identified as Katie Pine, a teena...

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Ellis Portal Mysteries

First book: Free reign

by Rosemary Aubert

Ellis Portal had once been an esteemed judge. Now, he lives as a vagrant in the wilderness that runs through the heart of Toronto. One day, while w...

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Grub-and-Stakers

First book: The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain

by Charlotte MacLeod

Anyone growing up in Lobelia Falls is taught to learn the elegant, ancient, and occasionally deadly art of shooting with a bow and arrow. Practicin...

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Paradise Cafe

First book: Heat Wave

by Maureen Jennings

It's July 1936 and Toronto is under a record-breaking heat wave. Charlotte Frayne is the junior associate in a two-person private investigation fir...

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Hygge House Nordic Mystery

First book: Hygge and Homicide

by A. L. Jensen

When talented interior designer Minna Halonen returns to her idyllic northern hometown after decades away, she's ready for a fresh start. Recently ...

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Naya Investigates

First book: Journey of a Thousand Steps

by Madona Skaff-Koren

Naya had the perfect life. Co-owner of a fast growing security software company, she ran marathons in her spare time. Suddenly everything changed w...

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The Apocalypse

First book: The Judas Legacy

by W.M. Leesman

Masada, AD 73. As the Roman X Legion closes in, the defenders of the ancient fortress make a final, desperate decision-hide a cache of powerful rel...

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Lake Pines Mystery

First book: Murder at First Light

by L.L. Abbott

A regatta at dawn turns deadly when a body is discovered, sending shockwaves through the quiet town of Lake Pines. As secrets ripple beneath the su...

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Charlie Salter

First book: The night the gods smiled

by Eric Wright

Inspector Charlie Salter, a detective with the Toronto Police Department, is assigned to solve the murder of Professor David Summers, an English pr...

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Belle Palmer Mystery

First book: Northern winters are murder

by Lou Allin

Another freezing winter descends in seeming peace upon the Northern Ontario lake where realtor Belle Palmer lives genteelly with her dog, tropical ...

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Detective Greene

First book: Old City Hall

by Robert Rotenberg

Kevin Brace, Canada’s most renowned radio personality, stands in his opulent condominium doorway, bloodied hands gripping the doorframe. He turn...

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Camilla McPhee Mystery

First book: Speak ill of the dead

by Mary Jane Maffini

Camilla MacPhee is the black sheep of her perfect, blonde family, although she runs a law office specializing in Justice for Victims of violent cri...

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Ottawa Detective

First book: A Striking Similarity

by Kevin Hopkins

Detective Terry Millar doesn't believe in coincidences. As a criminal profiler, he's built his reputation on identifying patterns and perpetrators....

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Benny Cooperman

First book: Suicide Murders

by Howard Engel

When Myrna Yates visits private investigator Benny Cooperman to look into her husband Chester’s suspected infidelity, what begins as a routine ca...

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Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery

First book: Tainted

by Ross Pennie

In an affluent city perched on Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment, residents begin turning up on the pathologist’s autopsy table with what looks like...

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Gabe Garshowitz

First book: Unlikely Victims

by Alvin Abram

The author’s debut mystery introduces Toronto homicide detective Gabe Garshowitz. Nominated for the 2002 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel,...

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The Screech Owls

First book: The Night They Stole the Stanley Cup

by Roy MacGregor

Travis, Nish, and the rest of the Screech Owls have come to Toronto for the biggest hockey tournament of their lives – only to find themselves in...

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Dylan Maples Adventure

First book: The Secret of the Silver Mines

by Shane Peacock

Just when Dylan Maples is settling down after last summer's trip to Ireland's Eye, the parental units are at it again—planning another family adv...

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Tom & Liz Austen Mysteries

First book: The lost treasure of Casa Loma

by Eric Wilson

Tom and Liz explore the mysterious halls of Casa Loma, uncovering clues to a long‑hidden treasure. Secret passages, old legends, and modern crimi...

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Arthur Beauchamp

First book: Snow Job

by William Deverell

In this zany political thriller, the leader of the despotic Asian nation of Bhashyistan declares war on Canada after a limo bearing its visiting de...

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Alias Grace

Stand-alone

by Margaret Atwood

Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper an...

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All June Left Behind

Stand-alone

by Karen Grose

Ray had it all—a loving relationship with his wife June, a busy farm, and two beautiful grown children. Until the night June was shot on their fo...

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Alone in the classroom

Stand-alone

by Elizabeth Hay

In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them and darkening their liv...

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Canoe Lake

Stand-alone

by Roy MacGregor

A troubled American woman travels to a small Ontario town, determined to find the mother she has never known. As she searches through dusty records...

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The Chambermaid's Key

Stand-alone

by Genevieve Graham

Set in 1929, Rosie Ryan dreams of escaping Toronto’s rough Ward neighborhood by securing a position as a chambermaid at the prestigious Dominion ...

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City of the Muse

Stand-alone

by Kate Hilton

A gripping dual-timeline novel about the mysterious death of an indomitable female papyrologist during an archaeological dig in the early 1900s and...

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The Cure for Drowning

Stand-alone

by Loghan Paylor

Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since, at ten, they fell throu...

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Death and the Intern

Stand-alone

by Jeremy Hanson-Finger

Janwar Gupta, a brilliant but neurotic medical student intern, has a patient die under suspicious circumstances during his placement at the Ottawa ...

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Death in the age of steam

Stand-alone

by Mel Bradshaw

Toronto in 1856 is industrializing with little time for scruple or sentiment. When Reform politician William Sheridan dies suddenly and his daughte...

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Let it ride

Stand-alone

by John McFetridge

Vernard ‘Get’ McGetty is back from serving in Afghanistan, back dealing drugs in Detroit and looking to move up with his buddy JT, a guy he met...

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Lies that Bind

Stand-alone

by Penelope Williams

Tulla Murphy's life has unraveled. Spurred by a loss that forces her to rethink all her plans, she retreats to the town where she grew up, even tho...

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Lower City

Stand-alone

by Alex Spring

In 2025, Hamilton, Ontario is plagued by abductions orchestrated by criminals seeking to form a “perfect family.” Danny Clarke, a young steelwo...

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The Mystic and the Missing Girl

Stand-alone

by Vikki VanSickle

Drew Benson has a secret. She gets visions, something she hasn’t tapped into since she was a teenager, when her late aunt, a TV psychic known as ...

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One Minute More

Stand-alone

by Robert Rotenberg

It’s a long-shot mission. No one thinks much of the information the Toronto chief of police receives from a mysterious source: a would-be assassi...

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Other Side

Stand-alone

by Heather Camlot

Twelve-year-old Liam finds a dead body along the shore at his grandfather's cottage. He can't erase what he's seen and can't focus on anything else...

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Quarrel With the Foe

Stand-alone

by Mel Bradshaw

After surviving the horrors of the Great War, Paul Shenstone works as a police detective in 1920s Toronto, rooting out petty criminals and rumrunne...

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Road to Heaven

Stand-alone

by Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson

Patrick Bird, police academy burnout turned PI, works divorce cases, using his camera to catch the unfaithful and the lonely looking for love in re...

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Street Legal: The Betrayal

Stand-alone

by William Deverell

This legal thriller follows the lives of three young, ambitious lawyers in 1980 as they are setting up their own practice. The fledgling firm is ro...

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Tumblin' Dice

Stand-alone

by John McFetridge

The High, a band with a few hit songs in the late 1970s, have reunited to play the nostalgia circuit at casinos. But for bassist Barry and lead sin...

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Venom Lake

Stand-alone

by Emma White

On a weekend getaway for their true-crime book club, four women retreat to the sole cottage on isolated Snakebite Island. But what was supposed to ...

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Yesterday's Lies

Stand-alone

by Jan Field

A chilling murder, a web of lies, and a legacy that won't stay buried. When RCMP officer Matt Brennan inherits Lonely Lake Lodge, he expects a brie...

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